Scyantific posted:

Ok I held off on this because I couldn't phrase it right.

First off, anything in Battlemaster's Corner is obsolete garbage, ignore it.

Second, and fair trigger warning here, Two-Hander is obsolete when it comes to PvE with Stam Sorc. The main appeal it has is Momentum/Rally and that takes a long time to unlock at rank 42, plus with the changes to Surge, it's less worthwhile now that Wrecking Blow doesn't give gigantic heals.

So what do you run? Dual Wield. Not only does it give more weapon damage, it also opens up an additional item for set building, and now it comes with two heals very early in the tree. And contrary to what people say, you DO NOT need Maelstrom weapons to pull good DPS. I ran Agility stuff for DW and still kept up with the DPS of other people who ran at least one Maelstrom item.

So quick and dirty, here's what you do.

Levels 1-15
-Run dual one-handed weapons, start working on that DW skill line.
-Run all Medium armor
-Get both Twin Slashes and Flurry from the DW tree. Level these up and morph them to Blood Craze and Bloodthirst, respectively. Now you have heals to sustain you until you unlock Surge.
-Speaking of surge, make sure you level up the Storm Calling tree as fast as you can. Get Lightning Form from that tree, and level it up. Morph to Hurricane when it's leveled, probably the most brutal PBAoE in your arsenal, and probably the game.
-Begin leveling up Dark Magic and Daedric Summoning as well, for the passives and the skills Dark Exchange and Bound Armor.
-Start working on leveling Fighter's Guild as well for both Expert Hunter and Trap Beast.

At level 15, get yourself a bow and start working on that too.

Eventually you'll want to have your skills set up like this:
Flurry -> Rapid Strikes
Twin Slashes -> Rending Slashes
Lightning Form -> Hurricane
Poison Arrow -> Poison Injection
Volley -> Endless Hail
Surge -> Critical Surge
Bound Armor -> Bound Armaments
Dark Exchange -> Dark Deal
Trap Beast -> Rearming Trap
Whirlwind -> Steel Tornado
Evasion -> Shuffle
Expert Hunter -> Camouflaged Hunter


Ultimates:
Dawnbreaker -> Flawless Dawnbreaker for PvE, Dawnbreaker of Smiting for PvP
Lacerate -> Rend
Negate Magic -> Absorption Field
Overload -> Energy Overload (PRO-TIP: Activating Overload opens up a third skill bar that you can use, just slot whatever skills you want in that bar when you have Overload active)
Summon Storm Atronach -> Greater Storm Atronach

Your bars should look like this:
Bar 1 (DW): Rapid Strikes, Rending Slashes, Rearming Trap, Camo Hunter, Bound Armaments, U: Rend or Dawnbreaker
Bar 2 (Bow): Poison Injection, Endless Hail, Hurricane, Critical Surge, Bound Armaments, U: Energy Overload

Overload Additional Bar: Dark Deal, Razor Caltrops, Shuffle, Critical Surge, Bound Armaments

Dump all your attribute points into Stamina.

Once you have most of those skills unlocked and Surge unlocked, the constant ticks of damage from Volley, Hurricane, Twin Slashes, and Flurry will be more than enough to keep you alive. If you want to be even nastier, get into PvP and unlock Caltrops and Vigor. Caltrops is another giant AoE DoT that slows enemies down while Vigor is probably the best stam-based heal in the game.


tl;dr 2H bad in PvE, go Dual Wield.